The Stalactite Ballroom
by Duchess Winna
Summary: It's a beautiful summer night, but Narcissa can feel her life unraveling at the edges, the process making its way slowly to her core. Just after Andromeda's departure, Lucius and Narcissa converse about society, expectations, and love. One-shot.


**Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns these characters; I do not.**

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The Stalactite Ballroom, permanently rented by Cygnus and Druella Black, is adrift with forced exuberance laced by an underlying tension. The laughs emanating from the couples who are dancing seem to spread waves of superficiality alongside the sound, the noises of amusement themselves a desperate attempt to fend off what could be termed the coming apocalypse. The wine seems to glint malevolently as what appears to be artificial light from the chandeliers casts it in an unearthly glow. The wood of the ballroom seems ready to crack at any moment, the natural patterns in the wood darkening and looking increasingly like gaping crevasses, glimpses into a kind of netherworld where there is no justice and all ideas of family and morality are turned upon their heads.

Narcissa slips into an empty adjacent room, its slight aura of decay a welcome retreat from the false liveliness of the main hall. She carries a bottle of red wine with her, swiped from the table nearest to this door, which she promptly closes and locks. She lights a cigarette with her wand, feeling faintly rebellious at using magic to perform a mundane Muggle action. Inhaling too deeply, she relishes the feeling of constriction and wondering idly about the concept of asphyxiation. It wouldn't be an unpleasant way to die, really. A few minutes of pain, and then nothing. If you didn't fight it, then your body would still look presentable enough to be shown at a funeral in an open casket. She imagines her own body arranged in such a manner, white-gold curls spread out on a porcelain-colored blanket, eyelashes touched up by a brush of mascara, pale skin accentuated by the dim glow of the candles. It's a romantic image, her mother would say with scorn, as if anything even vaguely chivalric or reminiscent of a fairy tale wasn't worthy of anyone's time. It's a wonder, really, that practical Druella Black could have raised three wildly idealistic daughters.

Still taking drags on her cigarette, Narcissa feels a kind of vintage elegance at tapping the charred end in what she imagines to be a genteel way on the lip of an empty bottle, forgotten during the daily sweeps performed by the cleaning staff. She examines the bottle more closely. It's beer, and she wonders whether it was actually consumed by the cleaning staff, rather than overlooked. She can't imagine something as common as beer being offered at the prestigious Stalactite Ballroom; her parents always said that beer, like cigarettes, was for Mudbloods and bohemians, two terms which were roughly equal in their own index of vulgarity. Narcissa doesn't care either way about Mudbloods, aside from the ingrained distaste she has been trained her whole life to feel, but the idea that she is a bohemian is one which sends a shiver of delight up her spine. She can picture herself in England in the 1920s, riding in trains across the country for no apparent reason, with no responsibilities or cares, smoking cigarettes and cigars and wearing dresses that flared out at the end and red stilettos. She imagines lying in bed next to a random man, probably an American, who sang so evocatively on the street corner that she had decided she simply had to have him. She can picture his nude, muscled back turned away from her as he sleeps, with daylight just beginning to crash into the thin slit of their window. As a lost girl herself, she can relate all too well to the Lost Generation.

Bored now with the dim confines of the room, and awakened by her fantasies, she throws the remains of her cigarette into the bottle and glances around the room. It appears dull to her now, a prison, just like the rest of the accoutrements that together, make up the jigsaw of her world. She slides across the room to another door, which she tries. It's open, so she pushes it a little, and a whiff of summer air flares into her nostrils. Intoxicated immediately, she retreats a few steps to snatch her bottle of wine, then lets herself be drawn into the outdoors.

It's a beautiful summer night, but Narcissa can feel her life unraveling at the edges, the process making its way slowly to her core. The stars up in the sky shine too brightly, looking more menacing than beautiful, and Narcissa remembers, for what seems like the thousandth time, that she is not one of them, that while her cousins and sisters and practically everyone else in her family was named for a star or constellation or galaxy, she was named for a flower. It is a namesake that other girls would have found delightful or charming, but she hates the impression of weakness it provides compared with the warlike heroes providing the heritage of her cousins and sisters. No amount of her mother's soothing tones of "it's such a beautiful flower, darling" and "it's based off of a Greek myth, see, and most of the constellations were named for myths too" could comfort her into complacence. And anyway, soon those reassurances dwindled as she increased in age and her mother became increasingly irritated with having to justify a name choice that she could see no fault in. Narcissa still doesn't know whether it was her mother or father's decision to bestow it upon her.

Trying to push all that aside, she lets the rare warmth flood her. She sits down on the gravel pathway, clutching her bottle of wine, and breathes in the scent of humidity and flowers and night. The sound of footsteps behind her startle her as she turns to face them.

"I thought the door was locked," she says, because it's the first thing that comes to her mind. The ingénue in her could have easily thought of something wittier, yet the shock caused her to speak impulsively. Checking herself, she says, as a manner of course-correction, adding a glint of flirtation to her voice, "the night was just too beautiful to want to share with anyone."

It's a pleasing reply, and it evokes the sought-after response. Lucius Malfoy smiles crookedly, revealing a glimmer of straight white teeth. Boyish good looks have turned to undeniable adult handsomeness over the last few years; he has now assuredly grown into the white-blond hair that had seemed so intimidating and incongruous on a child. "May I sit down?" he asks. Waiting for a reply is a formality, and they both know it. Still, he is gracious enough to afford her the pretense of having any kind of control.

"Of course," she says. She means the words to sound pleasant, like chamomile tea served right before bedtime, seductive in an innocent way, but she worries, once the words are out, that they sound saccharine and childlike. Attempting to correct this perceived mishap, she glances coquettishly at the flowers and then at him as he sits down beside her, feigning coyness. It is the routine she has perfected over the years. Bellatrix has always been the siren, reveling in her own fierce sensual power, and Andromeda emanated an intensity, an intellectual and emotional magnetism. Narcissa has learned to adapt her quiet nature to suit her own ends, and it has served her well. Up until this point, at any rate. With the way her tongue has been acting of its own accord, she has a terrible suspicion that Lucius may alarmingly soon make a hasty excuse and depart as quickly as he came.

He clears his throat nervously, but then decides against speaking. He glances at her twice, then looks straight ahead into the night. She wonders if there's disappointment tracing the contours of his face, but she doesn't dare to look. Several weeks of subtle, understated courtship bubble beneath the surface of the night. She wonders if she can even call it courtship – it's been more of a build-up, a series of suggestive conversations with evocative eye contact that is utterly different from the casual friendship that they had had before. It is a burgeoning romance undercut by her own family dilemmas and worries, and, from what she can imagine, his confusion at her alternating interest and apparent desire to isolate herself as much as possible from everyone, including him.

The truth is that she doesn't know how to be around people anymore, to pretend that everything is exactly the same as it was before. She doesn't know how to explain that this almost-relationship, one that she has craved since she was a ten-year-old with an overwhelmingly embarrassing crush on the remarkably good-looking, older, pure-blood scion whose eyes held traces of indescribable maturity and knowledge, has arrived at a completely inopportune time.

Feeling guilty now, and also terrified that her life is passing her by without her conscious participation, she takes out the bottle of wine and uncorks it. "Would you like some?" she offers, trying to make her voice husky, the way Bella does whenever she's talking to an attractive boy. It doesn't feel right, so she discards the trick, adding it to the pile of other garments she picked up from Bella that haven't quite fit her. "I stole it from the main area."

She studies his face for visible evidence of any relief he might feel that she is acting like a person again, that her sojourn in the world of the ghosts has come to a close, but doesn't find any. He nods, though. She takes a swig, and after she swallows, realizes that he is staring at her, and immediately, in the millisecond following that, understands her faux pas. A blush making its way onto her cheeks, she murmurs, "well, that wasn't very ladylike" by way of excuse. She slips him the bottle without meeting his eyes, embarrassed. In the wake of scandal, behaving as if no rules of propriety exist is sure to make a terrible impression, she worries. Her thoughts take on characteristics of her mother's cold voice.

Finally, when she regains the courage to look at him again, she sees him take a gulp from the bottle as well, and give her a warm smile afterward. "You don't need to worry about what I think of you," he says, after a moment's pause. He sets the bottle down on the gravel, in the space separating them, squeezed in between his right leg and her left. When she doesn't reply, he asks, in a softer voice, "why do you?"

She doesn't know how to reply to this, so she takes the bottle and places it in her lap, holding it with one hand and tapping rhythms onto it with the other while she considers the question. He makes a noise in the back of his throat as he watches her. "Look, Narcissa, if this – if I'm – not what you want…" there is such a strong note of disbelief in his voice that stems from years as a sought-after heartthrob who has seldom, if ever, been denied by a girl, that makes her smile. Seeing it, he tenses, beginning to rise to his feet. Feeling suddenly as if the last pillar holding up the sky is beginning to wobble, she reaches out a hand to stay him, out of pure instinct. It alights on his calf, and, uncomfortable, she is unsure whether to keep it there or remove it. She can feel his muscle through the fabric, a strength that causes her to lose sight of everything for a moment. Nervous, she awkwardly draws her hand away through the air. It finds its way back to the wine bottle which she removes from her lap and places in front of her, as she turns it in revolutions as he sits back down. She wishes she could return to the days of their friendship, where easy conversation would permeate the air, before he began to see her as a woman.

Finally, she says, because she realizes she never answered his question, "I worry about how you think of me because I care about your opinion. I'm afraid of scaring you away." She pierces her gaze upon him then, hoping that she can impress the truth of her words by sheer force of mind.

Before she understands what is happening, he has slid his arm around her shoulders. He pulls away her robes to expose her shoulders to the summer breeze, revealing her sleeveless silver gown beneath. She feels an unwilling intake of breath as his hands brush against the naked borderline of her shoulder and arm in a light flurry of sensation. He pulls her a little closer to him, and she moves her lower body to match the movement of her upper. "It's really bothering you, isn't it?" he observes, tightening his hold infinitesimally. He gives a rare self-deprecating smile then, correcting himself, "of course it is."

For some reason, the fact that he is unsure of himself too around her, that she possesses the power to make the usually composed and eloquent Lucius Malfoy to trip over his words, fills her with a sense of pride and giddiness. She nestles into him closer. "I didn't think it would feel like this," she says, ready to confide in him. Suddenly, all the emotions that she has been keeping inside of herself seem to force themselves out of her, unwilling to be restrained any longer. She prays that what he says is true, and that he will not judge her for her sentiments. "All the rhetoric that Mother and Father spew about blood traitors...I never thought of them as human. I never thought of them as family, not as my sister." She forces herself to say the name, because somehow, she thinks that he deserves it. "Not Andromeda." She takes a breath, wondering if he will say anything, but he doesn't, so she continues. "I miss her, you know. I never had imagined not having her as my sister, so I never imagined what it would be like to miss her. I still have no fucking idea how to miss her." The word slips out without her intent, but she is beyond caring about formalities. Like a terrible wound, once unplugged the emotions gush out of her, uncontrollable. She maneuvers herself to look at him, her eyes pleading. "Please don't tell me that she's a blood traitor and that I should forget about her."

His voice seems lower than usual as he answers, and she realizes that there is emotion in it. He feels for her, and despite the tears that are welling in her eyes, she finds unprecedented euphoria in the idea of it. "I wasn't going to. I wouldn't expect you to forget her that easily; that isn't who you are."

She wants to spin out a clever retort of how well he really knows her, but it's pointless. The fact of the matter is that he _does_ know her, surprisingly well, it seems. "What are we judging her on, anyway? The fact that she fell in love? People fall in love every day, and we don't care. We might think that they're idiots, but we don't care. It seems stupid that we're punishing her for falling for the wrong man. It kills me that it could be me – I would have made the same choice she did, I think. And it kills me even more that I don't have the courage to stay her sister, and that maybe she knew that, and that's why she didn't tell me." The anger leaves her swiftly, but the energy remains. The sentiment she has just express awes her, leaving her gaping. It has always been inside of her, she supposes, stemming from the girl who could never hear enough romantic and chivalric tales and who later was forced to wonder why such lessons couldn't apply to the world that she lived in. Giving a rueful smile she says, by way of apology, "I…I don't really know where that came from."

The look he gives her is one that leaves her breathless. She hadn't dared hope to see any kind of understanding there, but it is present, forcefully so. "Wherever it came from, I like that part of you," he says gently. He takes her hand, turns the palm up, and traces her heart line with his index finger. The touch of his finger feels cool, an odd sensation juxtaposed with the humid night. When she raises an eyebrow, looking for some kind of clarification, he shrugs. "She was your sister for sixteen years, and suddenly she isn't, just because that awful old matriarch Walburga Black says so? Showing emotion isn't weak, it's human."

The simple sentiment – that maybe, it's all right to feel empty without her sister – strikes her with the precision of a viper bite, momentarily paralyzing her. From the outset, it was assumed that Andromeda would be treated as an enemy, and the whole family would accept it. In a day, all Andromeda's actions changed from the present tense to the past – a death without any of the accompanying accolades.

She knows that, being an only child, he doesn't quite understand. But she can tell from the tormented look in his eyes that he is trying to, looking at the world from her perspective and feeling some of her misery, simply because he cares about her.

She needs to think about it more before she can make a complete diagnosis, but in a way she feels it freeing her already. "I know," she says, then relaxes herself by leaning back against his muscled arms. "You sound quite the philosopher, though, talking about human nature with such assurance."

Lucius laughs at that. They are on more stable ground now, but Narcissa knows it is only because of that thread of trust woven a few minutes before that she can open herself to him now, after what had seemed like the end of the world. Now, she is in a land where she has never voyaged before, and they are together, looking for foliage amid what appears to be an arid desert. "I guess that my Grand Tour paid off for something…discussing Plato in shabby bars with wizened old warlocks in Athens, drinking absinthe with the dregs of society in Prague…" He sniffs the air, an amused smile spreading across his face.

Without meaning to, she lets out a sigh of both awe and envy. When he looks at her quizzically, she explains, with a touch of wistfulness, "I would love to go on a Grand Tour. I've only travelled out of the country to France and Italy, and even those were with my parents. To be on my own, drinking wine whenever I want and stumbling home in the middle of the night along the same street as the Acropolis? I'd love that."

He turns her hand back over and threads his fingers through hers, then tightens his hold. "If you want," he says. Surety of the sentiment he wants to express and confusion over how to broach it compete in his tone. "I'll be going to Russia over the summer – we had to cut our trip short, Nott and me, because he got so ill – and if you'd like to come with me…" He leaves it artfully open, a vague invitation that, if not taken, will put no stain of rejection upon their relationship.

She fights with herself not to jump up and down in her exuberance. Trying to keep herself contained, but unable to suppress her own excited grin she nods. "I'd love to." The specter of her family rises again, and she adds, unwillingly, "but given everything that's happened, I doubt my parents would let me." She cannot count the number of restrictions have placed on her recently; they have said that previously, they had forgotten that passions were, regrettably, native to the Black temperament, but they would attempt rectify that mistake in upbringing.

He raises her hand, still grasped by his, to his lips, closing his lips around each knuckle to kiss it individually. "On the contrary," he says, returning her hand to her side, "I think they'd be pleased that you, unlike your sister, are interested in what they would deem a respectable man." He stills then, realizing the full impact of his words. "I'm sorry," he says, sincerely. "I know what that sounded like – using Andromeda to try to gain something for ourselves."

She shakes her head. "No," she says thoughtfully. "If any good can come out of this situation, I want to use it." She meets his eyes. "Even if my parents don't approve, though, I'm still going." It's a bold declaration, something that Bellatrix or Andromeda might say, but not her. She likes the way it feels coming from her mouth, decisive and assertive. She likes the feeling that she is not just a puppet, and that she has a distinct will and individual desires. She wants to be strong, and she thinks that maybe if she wants it badly enough, she will attain it by the simple force that act. "I'm not going to be cowed by what they think," she says, as an explanation that isn't needed, but she feels that, nevertheless, she should give.

The most miraculous thing about it all is that he believes her, thinks that she is capable of such bravery, and it emboldens her. She rises slightly; she can feel his touch loosen as he glances at her, unable to hide his momentary confusion, but she repositions herself in front of him, her knees touching his legs. He understands, and winds his arms around her shoulders as she moves closer to him, till her knees are on top of him. He leans forward to kiss her. Their lips meet and tingle; after a second their tongues emerge and gently flirt with each other.

It is a kiss, it isn't marriage, but after the kiss ends, for a moment she is spinning in a premonition. She sees them kissing for the rest of their lives, can imagine waking up to his gray eyes speckled with sunlight. Narcissa realizes that, in the midst of all this agonizing over Andromeda's departure, everyone, including herself, have lost track of what _she_ wants. She doesn't want to become a machine like her parents; she wants to love and be loved. She wants to be kissed like this forever, to never be without the touch of his skin. She slides her hands onto his muscled chest; he gives a little noise, tilting his head to the side slightly. He reaches for her, his hand slipping underneath the fabric of her dress up her leg, until he reaches her thigh.

She wants this, and she wants him. This new world that she has entered is terrifying and lonely, and the idea that it doesn't have to be is a thoroughly intoxicating idea. She is drunk on it, and on him. Their kisses take on a note of hunger, of desperation, on her end. She pours herself into him, losing and finding herself simultaneously. The separate movements that allow them to more easily reach their desired end blend together: the removal of clothing, relocation to a patch of soft summer grass, and slight repositioning of their bodies. He begins to guide her, but while she has never done this before, at the slightest suggestion of his fingers she understands how to place herself. She arches herself against him with easy grace. She thinks of adventuring, of seeing the world with him. He whispers something to her that she cannot distinguish, but she understands the raw emotions behind them.

The world that had seemed so small just an hour ago has expanded to the very limits of the universe, and beyond. The cracks in the staid world of the Stalactite Ballroom seem to be finally breaking apart, creating a new universe and a new perspective. To the people dancing away their troubles inside, it might seem outlandish to fuck in such a dignified locale as the Stalactite, with one's parents just a stone's throw away, but Narcissa wouldn't care if the entire circle of both their acquaintances were to emerge from the door at this moment. They have transported themselves to an entirely different sphere of existence.

She feels reborn and alive. The recent devastation that had so transfixed her life is not gone, but it is far enough away for her to ignore it for the time being. She has, in a glimpse of radiance, discovered what it is that she wants, realized the person beneath the layers of shells that have been placed upon her. Her life is before her, separate from that of her sisters or her parents or her cousins. She is not just the third Black daughter; she is Narcissa, a woman in her own right. She looks at him and understands wordlessly that he, too, is discovering similar truths about his own nature: how to be a Malfoy and how also to be himself. She wants to share in his knowledge and for him to partake in hers, but there is time. There is infinite time.

Together, seamlessly, they arise and, after adjusting their clothing, walk hand in hand back towards the ballroom. They pause for a kiss before entering it, and clasp their intertwined fingers tighter.


End file.
